We have a recently resurrected from the boneyard by someone at the office Win
7 machine. It’s more than 10 years old. It has a 3.something GHz quad-core
i5. It has 8 GB RAM. It has a 802.11n wireless card. It has Gb Ethernet. The
guy at the office was going to have younglings use it for schoolwork, it
surely isn’t going to run modern games.

Problem: it won’t consistently connect to infrastructure wireless. He tried
at home (AT&T) and the office (Comcast Business). It connects to
infrastructure wireless, 802.11ac or 802.11n, roughly one sixth of the time.
It connects to iPads/iPhones/Macs/Ubuntu 18.04 systems set to share wireless
first time, every time. It connects to Win7 systems set to share wireless
first time, every time. It connects to Ethernet, first time, every time. It
does not connect to Win 10, ever. It doesn’t even see Win 10 systems, and
those times it doesn’t connect tothe infrastructure wireless, it doesn’t
see them, either. When it does connect to infrastructure wireless it gets an
APIPA address and cannot see the internet, making it useless as a youngling
torture device.

It appears to be violently allergic to infrastructure wireless and Win 10,
but likes everyone else. If it was my machine I’d either just plug it in by
Ethernet or put Ubuntu on it to see if the OS made a difference, but the guy
in question wants to know what the hell is going on. Does anyone have a
possible clue?

In article <0001HW.265DBB6D00511A2E70000C0CE38F@news.supernews.com>,
Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> wrote:

> We have a recently resurrected from the boneyard by someone at the office Win
> 7 machine. It¹s more than 10 years old. It has a 3.something GHz quad-core
> i5. It has 8 GB RAM. It has a 802.11n wireless card. It has Gb Ethernet. The
> guy at the office was going to have younglings use it for schoolwork, it
> surely isn¹t going to run modern games.
>
> Problem: it won¹t consistently connect to infrastructure wireless. He tried
> at home (AT&T) and the office (Comcast Business). It connects to
> infrastructure wireless, 802.11ac or 802.11n, roughly one sixth of the time.
> It connects to iPads/iPhones/Macs/Ubuntu 18.04 systems set to share wireless
> first time, every time. It connects to Win7 systems set to share wireless
> first time, every time. It connects to Ethernet, first time, every time. It
> does not connect to Win 10, ever. It doesn¹t even see Win 10 systems, and
> those times it doesn¹t connect tothe infrastructure wireless, it doesn¹t
> see them, either. When it does connect to infrastructure wireless it gets an
> APIPA address and cannot see the internet, making it useless as a youngling
> torture device.
>
> It appears to be violently allergic to infrastructure wireless and Win 10,
> but likes everyone else. If it was my machine I¹d either just plug it in by
> Ethernet or put Ubuntu on it to see if the OS made a difference, but the guy
> in question wants to know what the hell is going on. Does anyone have a
> possible clue?

test it with wired ethernet and see what happens.

also test it with a usb wifi adapter if you have one available (or swap
the wifi card but that's less likely to have a spare).

Wolffan wrote:

> We have a recently resurrected from the boneyard by someone at the office Win
> 7 machine. It’s more than 10 years old. It has a 3.something GHz quad-core
> i5. It has 8 GB RAM. It has a 802.11n wireless card. It has Gb Ethernet. The
> guy at the office was going to have younglings use it for schoolwork, it
> surely isn’t going to run modern games.
>
> Problem: it won’t consistently connect to infrastructure wireless. He tried
> at home (AT&T) and the office (Comcast Business). It connects to
> infrastructure wireless, 802.11ac or 802.11n, roughly one sixth of the time.
> It connects to iPads/iPhones/Macs/Ubuntu 18.04 systems set to share wireless
> first time, every time. It connects to Win7 systems set to share wireless
> first time, every time. It connects to Ethernet, first time, every time. It
> does not connect to Win 10, ever. It doesn’t even see Win 10 systems, and
> those times it doesn’t connect tothe infrastructure wireless, it doesn’t
> see them, either. When it does connect to infrastructure wireless it gets an
> APIPA address and cannot see the internet, making it useless as a youngling
> torture device.
>
> It appears to be violently allergic to infrastructure wireless and Win 10,
> but likes everyone else. If it was my machine I’d either just plug it in by
> Ethernet or put Ubuntu on it to see if the OS made a difference, but the guy
> in question wants to know what the hell is going on. Does anyone

Wolffan,

Windows 7 cannot connect to Windows 10 unless the Windows 10 PC's have

SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support enabled.

To enable this, on any Windows 10 PC go to Control Panel->Programs and Features->

On the left hand side click Turn Windows features on or off then scroll down to

SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support and check the box.

A reboot is required.

Now from the Windows 7 you should be able to browse the network for that Windows 10 PC.

Rinse and repeat for any other Windows 10 PC's you need to access.

HTH

JT

JT wrote:
> Wolffan wrote:
>
>> We have a recently resurrected from the boneyard by someone at the office Win
>> 7 machine. It’s more than 10 years old. It has a 3.something GHz quad-core
>> i5. It has 8 GB RAM. It has a 802.11n wireless card. It has Gb Ethernet. The
>> guy at the office was going to have younglings use it for schoolwork, it
>> surely isn’t going to run modern games.
>>
>> Problem: it won’t consistently connect to infrastructure wireless. He tried
>> at home (AT&T) and the office (Comcast Business). It connects to
>> infrastructure wireless, 802.11ac or 802.11n, roughly one sixth of the time.
>> It connects to iPads/iPhones/Macs/Ubuntu 18.04 systems set to share wireless
>> first time, every time. It connects to Win7 systems set to share wireless
>> first time, every time. It connects to Ethernet, first time, every time. It
>> does not connect to Win 10, ever. It doesn’t even see Win 10 systems, and
>> those times it doesn’t connect tothe infrastructure wireless, it doesn’t
>> see them, either. When it does connect to infrastructure wireless it gets an
>> APIPA address and cannot see the internet, making it useless as a youngling
>> torture device.
>>
>> It appears to be violently allergic to infrastructure wireless and Win 10,
>> but likes everyone else. If it was my machine I’d either just plug it in by
>> Ethernet or put Ubuntu on it to see if the OS made a difference, but the guy
>> in question wants to know what the hell is going on. Does anyone
>
>
> Wolffan,
>
>
> Windows 7 cannot connect to Windows 10 unless the Windows 10 PC's have
>
> SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support enabled.
>
> To enable this, on any Windows 10 PC go to Control Panel->Programs and Features->
>
> On the left hand side click Turn Windows features on or off then scroll down to
>
> SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support and check the box.
>
> A reboot is required.
>
> Now from the Windows 7 you should be able to browse the network for that Windows 10 PC.
>
> Rinse and repeat for any other Windows 10 PC's you need to access.
>
> HTH
>
>
> JT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block#SMB_2.0

"Microsoft introduced a new version of the protocol
(SMB 2.0 or SMB2) with Windows Vista in 2006"

Windows 10 has SMB2 and SMB3 by default.
Windows 7 has SMB2 (and probably SMB1 without a fuss)

Windows 10 has SMB1, if you go to Control Panels (control.exe)
then Programs and Features : Windows Features and
turn on two of the three tick boxes.

Enabling SMBV1 on Windows 10, allows Windows 10 to contact *WinXP*

SMBV1 is not needed for Windows 10 comms with Vista/W7/W8/W8.1

Windows 10 has a couple services in services.msc that
begin with the word "Function". One of the two, is responsible
for NetBIOS and Network Browser activity. Both should be running
for the Network Neighborhood to show up.

There is NetBIOS and SSDP as nameserving protocols. NetBIOS is
the older one, used by the older OSes. SSDP is slightly newer.
I think you could install SSDP on Windows XP, via a download.

SSDP has in the past, tended to be used for uPNP and drawing
the Multimedia icons in one of the hardware windows. So if some
"device" makes an appearance on the network, SSDP could be part
of locating it. But SSDP has not traditionally been (to my knowledge)
a tool for file sharing. As a consequence of this fuzzy picture,
it's hard to say whether a NetBIOS protocol is still being
used so the machine names show up or not.

At the very least, the two "Function" services should be
checked, to see if they're running. Back when "HomeGroups"
were a thing, OSes like Windows 7 had a total of seven
services. Two of the services were the ones with the word
"Function" as the first word in their name. There were
five others. HomeGroups also required IPV6, and not all setups
necessarily have that (I don't expect your network switch cares,
but a router directing traffic onto the Internet might care).

The two "Function" ones, still appear to be used for
File Sharing, even when HomeGroups is deprecated on an OS.

Workgroups and SMB/CIFS came before HomeGroups, and I used to
see vague rumblings that both could work at the same time.

To see what's on the network, independent of their declared
WORKGROUP value, this can be used.

http://www.unixwiz.net/tools/nbtscan.html

http://www.unixwiz.net/tools/nbtscan-1.0.35.exe

nbtscan 192.168.1.0/24 <=== define IP and netmask to suit

192.168.1.29 WORKGROUP\BOB SHARING
192.168.1.57 WORKGROUP\BLUEWAVE SHARING
*timeout (normal end of scan)

Even if the results were like this:

192.168.1.29 WORKGROUP\BOB SHARING
192.168.1.57 MSHOME\BLUEWAVE SHARING
*timeout (normal end of scan)

the nbtscan still sees both machines. They can be
on different workgroups.

However, the network neighborhood may have trouble establishing
a connection, if the WORKGROUP=workgroup thing
doesn't agree on all setups. The system control panel
used to have a place for the user to edit the
WORKGROUP declaration, so that all of them could match.
Windows 7 installations might use MSHOME (as this
identifier seemed to be a default on an OS equipped
with HomeGroups). A user would do well to adjust all
equipment coming back in the nbtscan, so the identifiers
all matched. My machines are all workgroup=WORKGROUP
kinda thing.

192.168.1.29 WORKGROUP\BOB SHARING
192.168.1.57 WORKGROUP\BLUEWAVE SHARING
*timeout (normal end of scan)

If I use a Virtual Machine downloaded from Microsoft, those
still arrive with workgroup=MSHOME , and then this must be
modified so everybody plays nice. After changing the workgroup,
the machine generally requests a reboot, so the Network Browser
protocol will work properly (Browse Master Elections on non-Domains).

Just a guess,
Paul

On Tue, 25 May 2021 19:10:37 -0400, Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com>
wrote:

>We have a recently resurrected from the boneyard by someone at the office Win
>7 machine. It’s more than 10 years old. It has a 3.something GHz quad-core
>i5. It has 8 GB RAM. It has a 802.11n wireless card. It has Gb Ethernet. The
>guy at the office was going to have younglings use it for schoolwork, it
>surely isn’t going to run modern games.

I had a server with eight Pentium 3 900 Mhz CPUs
and 8 GB RAM.
It also had 4 15,000 RPM SCSI hard drives.
How does a 32 bit CPU address 8 GB?

Lucifer wrote:
> On Tue, 25 May 2021 19:10:37 -0400, Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com>
> wrote:
>
>> We have a recently resurrected from the boneyard by someone at the office Win
>> 7 machine. It’s more than 10 years old. It has a 3.something GHz quad-core
>> i5. It has 8 GB RAM. It has a 802.11n wireless card. It has Gb Ethernet. The
>> guy at the office was going to have younglings use it for schoolwork, it
>> surely isn’t going to run modern games.
>
> I had a server with eight Pentium 3 900 Mhz CPUs
> and 8 GB RAM.
> It also had 4 15,000 RPM SCSI hard drives.
> How does a 32 bit CPU address 8 GB?

With a Virtual to Physical page table and a
36 bit address bus on the physical side.

Processes can map 2GB:2GB split, which is
2GB of address space in Ring3 for userland,
and when you look up PID:Addr32 ==> PhysAddr36.

To use the 8GB then, takes four programs using
2GB each.

This is probably the PAE page table, but you'd
have to find some page table diagrams to find
the right one. Previously, another page table
format was used, because hardware was gutless and
speed of this block mattered.

Part of the program code comes from that space
too, which is why a program like Photoshop might
offer 1.8GB of the 2.0GB space for user photo storage
(undo buffers).

Paul